I haven't had the money to get my desktop fixed (going to other endeavors for now), so still playing a LOT of Majesty on my laptop. Tried Rise of Nations today, though, and even though it takes forever to load, gameplay itself runs okay. World domination, here I come!

I still need to build a new gaming desktop. My laptop came with a GTX 960M so it's reasonably competent, but I'm kind of intrigued by VR stuff and that's not going to happen with that GPU. I mean, it can barely manage current gen games and stuff on a normal screen.

Today I priced out a Threadripper build but things got silly pretty quickly. I don't think I'll be going that route. The Ryzen 7s look neat and I think I can do a whole system for less than $3k and still end up in the performance ballpark I want to be in. A Ryzen 7 with 1080ti and some arbitrary stupid amount of RAM ought to do it. An M.2 PCIe SSD is a stretch goal.

I keep meaning to do it but then I think well new hardware is just around the corner and my laptop still does pretty okay, so I don't. But new hardware is always just around the corner. I guess maybe I just don't need one and am too cheap frugal to spend that much money on a "nice-to-have."

In terms of games I have actually been playing, I finished Fallout 3 and have been in a sort of limbo ever since. I could do a run through New Vegas I suppose. In the last couple of days I've put more time into Fire Emblem on my 3DS than anything else.

New hardware IS always just around the corner but sometimes it's not worth it and sometimes it's insanely worth it, like the difference between the Pentiums and Core 2 line when they first came out or the difference between the mobile 10 series and mobile 900 series nvidia cards.

Here's a cool little video game story that I couldn't find a better thread to post in...........

So I'm still playing World of Warships quite a bit, and have gotten quite decent at it. There are 4500 clans or so in the game, and exponentially more players than that. The clan I'm in is in the top 40 best clans by recognized ranking sites. However, there are still lots of times that I play solo on teams with other randoms just due to scheduling.

So, about a month ago I was in a random game (usually 12-on-12, no respawns, once you are dead you can only watch or exit to a new match) and the team I was on was very mediocre. I tried to carry as much as I could, but wasn't able to do enough and was eventually ganged up on and killed. There was a guy left who was in a very powerful premium (i.e. he paid for it, even though the game is free to play) ship, but he was not very good. His playstyle was not making use of hardly any of the ship's strengths. Even an average player in that ship could've helped pull a win out, but he was basically handing the other team the victory. So I got on him a bit (not rudely, but directly) in chat and told him he really needs to learn how to play that ship better, and I suggested one or two online references to look for tips, videos, or strategy. Usually that type of comment ends up in the person either ignoring you, or raging back in chat with insults. Instead, this guy started asking a few specific questions as to where to find the stuff I was mentioning, so I gave him more info.

After the match, I got in chat with him and told him I wasn't trying to troll him, but that he really could help himself by learning more about the game. I suggested a few Youtube channels, a couple of websites revolving around the game, and told him I hoped it helped him enjoy the game better. Fast forward a week or ten days and I have a message in game from the guy. It was a long message about how much the references I steered him to have helped, how much more he's enjoyed the game, and finished with a "thanks man for helping this 71yr old guy out!" Obviously through text chat I had no idea who I was talking to, but it turns out this was just an older guy who loved naval stuff and gaming.

So over the last several weeks we have actually linked up in game to play a bunch. I've pointed out more game tools and strategy to him, and we've gotten on voice comms a bunch of times. I've introduced him to some of the guys I play with, and they've been gracious enough to allow him to play too. A bunch of times he's went on and on about how much more he's enjoying the game, thanking me for pointing stuff out to him, and just overall been a very cool guy out of it all. This past week I log in and have an in game gift from him for about $30 worth of in game currency as a "thank you" for all the help.

Most of you gamers have probably seen how suggestions or advice or criticism in game chat can turn salty. So I thought this one was pretty cool. Not just because he appreciated it enough to send me in game goods, but also because it was an older gamer who ended up really benefited from the exchange. And it was pretty awesome from my perspective helping him out too.

I'm still playing Ni No Kuni, but I am also playing Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, and in between those two getting in an occasional match of Splatoon. Between baby and work I now pretty much only have time for games on the weekends but so it goes.

I've now got a backlog of Darksouls 2 and 3, every Batman Arkham game, all three Witcher games, all three Dishonored games, Doom, Deus Ex Human Revolution, Nier Automata, MGS5, Rise of the Tombraider, Hellblade, Watchdogs 2, and Sonic Mania to get through.

Now I need to get a controller. Out of all of them I liked the feel of the WiiU Pro the most but I still want to handle a Steam Controller and see how it is before committing.

I don't even have a game console hooked up at the moment; we have Wii and PS2 and 3 (or at least I think we do--my son may have the 3). I play a lot on Facebook games--Spades, Words With Friends and the like--plus a game on my phone called Hay Day (Farmville kind of deal, I think).

I just don't have the time to start playing something like a Zelda game--I enjoy them, but if I don't play them daily, I forget what I've done or what I'm supposed to be doing next.

So Sonic Generations is... interesting... so far. I actually like the "New Sonic" sections more than the "classic sonic" ones. I also found starbound completely uncompelling and it felt like a painfully slow progressing and terribly balanced ripoff of Terraria. And lastly I'm seeing the "You Died" screen a lot in Dark Souls 2. Apparently DS2: Scholar of the First Sin doesn't work in fullscreen with refresh rates over 60hz but I've managed to get it working more or less by using a program called Borderless Gaming to force it into a window exactly the size of a fullscreen game.

I picked up Player Unknown Battlegrounds on the Steam sale on Friday and having playing it about 34 times here are my thoughts:

Very addictive for a game where your life expectancy is about a minute and a half! There's a counter and sort of a ticker where you can see how many players are left and who just killed who and with what. Actually, my games average about 15 minutes, usually into the 30 player range.

There's a death cam where you can watch the last 30 seconds of your life from the killer's viewpoint. It'd be nice if a voice chat was available for this as well, so you could chat with your killer. The killcam is a good idea cause 95% of the time you have no idea where the kill shot came from.

Volume is wonky. There is only master, music and effects volume controls. Unfortunately, gun shots and ambience are both included in the effects control. Gun shots are VERY loud and you can't turn them down without turning down the sound of people approaching which is a big giveaway for killing people hunting you! I always jump when the kill shot gets me cause it's so unexpected.

You're in a cargo plane over the island and the eject button flashes and you can see people falling from the plane, but the counter doesn't work until people start to die. It'd be helpful to know how many are left on the plane before you jump. I try to avoid landing near people, preferring to grab some weapons and hunker down till the initial killing spree is over.

Weapons come unloaded! Sometimes the weapons have ammo near them, and sometimes they don't. 9mm ammo for pistols doesn't work in M16 which take 7.62mm! You think someone would have standardized all this by now.

Great selection of weapons available, silent (crossbow) to old (tommy gun, lewis gun) to modern.